Academic Writing & Projects

I am an anthropologist and cultural researcher working at the intersection of sound, place,and the everyday ecologies of social life. My work translates ethnographic research into public-facing writing, copy, and analysis for media, cultural organizations, and creative projects. Across my research, I focus on sensory analysis, narrative framing, and close attention to lived experience. MA Thesis: Sharing Sonic Space -- My master’s thesis, Sharing Sonic Space: How California Venues and Fans Reimagine Space in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic, draws on fieldwork with live music venues, workers, and audiences to examine how sound mediates care, labor, risk, and collective behavior during crisis. The project centers listening as a social practice shaped by infrastructure and responsibility. Critical Essay: The Myth of the Clean Festival -- In The Myth of the Clean Festival: Utopian Sensory Ideals and the Breakdown of Fantasy, I examine music festivals as curated sensory environments that promise sustainability and ease while obscuring labor, waste, and bodily excess. Through on-site observation, I analyze how “clean” aesthetics and wellness branding function as fantasy and where that fantasy collapses. Ongoing Research: Listening, Texture, and Human Ecology -- My ongoing research uses listening as a method for understanding how people inhabit environments shaped by history, labor, and infrastructure. This work is informed by travel-based research across music scenes, festivals, and urban spaces, where I study how sound organizes movement, attention, and social relations.